4 Ways to Work More Efficiently in 2015

In the early days of the Internet, someone described the experience of dealing with all the newly available information as trying to drink water from a fire hose. And those were the early days—before smartphones, Twitter, and Facebook!

Throughout 2015, just like last year, you will be bombarded with emails, texts, IMs, phone calls, and possibly demands from yet-to-be-developed forms of technology. The leaders I consult with tell me they desperately need a simple method for dealing with the tsunami of demands that come their way.

They want a tool to help them balance their work and personal lives, a tool that will help them spend more time focused on the strategic issues of their business and on where they can add value. And they want to stay motivated and engaged by not being so overloaded.

It turns out that just such a tool has been available for a long time in a number of different forms. In the interest of helping you work more efficiently this year, I offer you the time-tested 4 Ds to help you prioritize your work and manage the ever-growing and demanding onslaught of action items.

Do

To twist a common adage—a leader’s gotta do what a leader’s gotta do. Especially if you can do it in a few minutes. Think of it this way, if a task will take about as long to do as it will to add it to your list, just do it. If a quick email can clear an item from your list, for example, knock out the email.

Put limits on your do-time as well. Set your phone countdown timer for 15 or 20 minutes. Then get as many onerous chores done as possible before you break for a fresh cup of coffee when your alarm goes off. Do it again later, if you have to. You can even break bigger jobs into half-hour or hour chunks, rewarding yourself with quick breaks in between.

Delegate

Delegating can take nearly as long as doing something yourself. But don’t do other people’s work. Make that an unbreakable rule this year.

In the first place, you can’t do everything yourself. So don’t try. Even if you know you can do something better than the person to whom you will delegate. I use a variation of the Pareto Efficiency principle. If you can delegate an assignment to someone who can do it at least 80 percent as well as you can, delegate it. What you lose in execution quality, you gain in enabling someone else to grow. Isn’t that what your team is looking for from you? That is, give team members the opportunity to rise from 80 percent to greater capability.

A leader is paid to lead, not to format documents or gussy up PowerPoints. Delegating not only helps your employees improve, it gives you more time to do what you do best—lead.

Defer

Now we come to the things you need to do but can’t do right now. Maybe you don’t have the time or resources at the moment. It’s okay to put them off as long as you make a decision as to when you will do them. “When” means you immediately schedule a date and you stop worrying about it until it appears on your calendar.

Schedule deferred tasks in your calendar or in someone else’s. Block out enough time to get your deferred tasks completed and make a serious commitment. Some actions can be deferred to “someday.”

Delete

Great leaders focus on actions that bring true value to their organizations, teams, customers, bosses, or themselves. Gone are the days when you can respond to every email or request. Be firm and eliminate any tasks that may be nice-to-do but do not create value.

Also be kind if you no longer want to be invited to a certain status update or no longer want to receive information about a specific project. Let those stakeholders know that you want to be deleted from the meeting invites or stop the being copied on emails.

Finally we come to those “someday” items on your to-do list that have resided there longer than you can remember. Bite the bullet and delete them. They’re just taking up space and making you feel inefficient.

It’s not always easy to let go of something you decided to do, especially if you were excited about the brainstorm that inspired you to list it. But after a while, they just bog you down. If it really was a great idea, a great thing to do, it will come back.

Free up your working-memory and gain more brain power

How will you achieve your goals that create the greatest value this week? Will you immediately go rummaging through your ever-growing to-do list cluttered with dozens of half-remembered details and hazy notes that mean little or nothing now? Do the words “swirling chaos” come to mind?

Your brain can’t work efficiently with hundreds of mental to-do notes (not to mention 87 unread emails) all clamoring for attention at the same time. When you’ve got too much going on, you will become overwhelmed.

Scientists estimate that we are exposed to as many as 11 million pieces of information at any one time, but our brains can only deal with 40 to 50. Obviously then, it makes sense to start with a thorough brain dump and then divide your activities in Do, Delegate, Delete, and Delay.

Learn and Practice

Improved technology won’t improve your life unless you manage it. Faster communication won’t make you faster unless you control it. Don’t let either control you. Take the dread out of wrangling your to-do list with the 4 Ds. You’ll not only become a more efficient leader in 2015, you’ll find you have more time to coach your teams.

If you really want to lead more efficiently, I strongly recommend our CoachQuest Leader-as-Coach program. There you will learn and practice the leadership skills you need to address alongside leaders like you from other organizations with many of the same challenges. Learn more about CoachQuest.

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